A+ Hardware Service Technician: Upgrades, Troubleshooting and Preventative Maintenance

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Upgrading a CPU

There are two main types of upgradeable sockets, ZIF and LIF, Zero Insertion Force and Low Insertion Force.

There are several things you need to keep in mind when upgrading a CPU. A CPU is only as fast as the bus on the motherboard and you should keep this in mind. You can upgrade a CPU but if the bus speed on the motherboard is not fast enough, you will not gain the speed increase you are looking for.

Also, one of the other important things to keep in mind when wishing to upgrade the CPU is the socket type on the motherboard. There are many different sizes of slots on the motherboard for the chip to fit into, you can see the socket sizes in the CPU section of the System Architecture course.

Upgrading the BIOS

When you need to upgrade the HD or other peripherals, your BIOS may be out of date and need upgraded as well.

Newer BIOSs have upgradeable EEPROMs so they can be upgraded without replacing the actual chip.

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